Ryan Coogler Teases ‘Sinners’ Themes And Supernatural Elements Beyond Vampires In His “Personal Love Letter” To Cinema

Dessi Gomez
·3-min read

A second trailer for Ryan Coogler’s fifth directorial feature film Sinners has arrived, and there is much to sink teeth into.

The horror film centers on Michael B. Jordan’s twins who return to their hometown to escape their troubled lives, only to realize that an even bigger threat lies in wait at home. Coogler hinted that vampires wouldn’t be “the only supernatural element” the film deals with. Coogler also opened up about how personal making the film was to him.

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“Each time I’ve made a film it’s become more and more personal. With this one I was digging into two relationships, one with my maternal grandfather who I never met. He died about a year before I was born,” Coogler said in a virtual press conference held by Warner Bros. yesterday. “He was from Merrill, Mississippi and eventually moved to Oakland, married my grandmother and actually built a house that our whole family was based out of in Oakland.”

The clip also gives another glimpse into the development of blues music and a white mob of vampires who wish to turn all the Black people they can find into the undead like them. Sinners marks Coogler’s fifth time collaborating with “kindred spirit” Jordan after Fruitvale Station, the first Creed film and Black Panther.

“I know that he is always trying to look for new challenges, constantly,” Coogler said. “He doesn’t want to rest on his laurels. I thought this role would be something where we could challenge each other.”

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The other relationship that influenced the making of Sinners was that of Coogler’s with his uncle James, whose death he felt he hadn’t had the chance to fully process until this project.

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“He actually passed away while I was in post production on Creed, and he was from another time in Mississippi, and he wouldn’t really talk about Mississippi unless he was listening to blues, unless he had a sip of Old Taylor Whiskey,” Coogler said. “Then he would reminisce. I miss him profoundly. With this film, I got a chance to dig into my own ancestral history here in the states, not dissimilar to what I was doing with the Panther films with generational ancestry.”

Coogler stressed music’s role in the story, on which he received advice from Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas. Ludwig Göransson, who recently won the Oscar for best original song for Oppenheimer (2024) and who has previously worked with Coogler on the Black Panter films, executive produces.

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“I had a change to really go to the south and think, and the film is about the music that was so special to my uncle,” he said. “One of the things we explore in the film is blues music and blues culture, and that became so many other things that affect what we do today. It was great to be able to explore that, and that music has a very close relationship with the macabre, with the supernatural.”

“I still wanted to play with archetypes, not just the vampire, but the supernaturally gifted musician, the twins,” Coogler added.

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Coogler also cited Salem’s Lot by Stephen King as an inspiration for Sinners, which was shot on Ultra Panavision cameras. The film’s cast includes Hailee Stenfeld, Miles Caton, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller, Li Jun Li, Delroy Lindo, Jack O’Connell, Christian Robinson and more.

Sinners arrives in theaters April 18, 2025.

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